Shimpei Itoh

Hey, y’all… apologies for the radio silence last week! I was knee-deep in term papers and final exams, but I submitted my course grades yesterday and am back in the manga-reviewing saddle. As penance for skipping a week, today’s column is super-sized, with review links galore and the low down on Cutie Honey a Go Go!, Seven Seas’ newest Go Nagai offering.

Cutie Honey a Go Go! is not a conventionally good manga: the plot is riddled with holes, the story lacks a proper conclusion, and the characters are paper-thin. Yet for all its obvious limitations, Cutie Honey a Go Go! is cheeky fun in the manner of an Austin Powers movie; it’s a cartoon of a cartoon, an irreverent send-up of the source material that simultaneously captures the original manga’s naughty tone while updating the plot and characters for contemporary readers.

Cutie Honey a Go Go! borrows liberally from Hideaki Anno’s 2004 film and Go Nagai’s original 1973 manga, mixing elements of both with a few new flourishes. In Cutie Honey a Go Go!, for example, Aki Natsuko is no longer a blushing school girl with a crush on her android sempai, but a hard-charging special agent who faces down danger with the brash confidence of a Harrison Ford character. Aki and Cutie’s arch nemesis Sister Jill has likewise gotten a makeover, from whip-wielding bad girl to wicked android intent on world domination. The signature elements of Nagai’s original story remain intact, however: Cutie Honey is still an impossibly innocent, cheerful android whose clothing dissolves to tatters every time she powers up, and her main opponents are the Panther Claw ladies, a group of monstrous beauties who work for Sister Jill.

Though manga-ka Shimpei Itoh’s action scenes are clumsy, his character designs are a playful nod to the era that begat Cutie Honey, straddling the fence between retro and modern. The Panther Claw gang look like Betty Paige cosplayers, busty gals in barely-there costumes that feature leopard spots and extra arms, while Cutie Honey rocks her signature pixie cut and a backless jumpsuit that David Lee Roth might have worn in 1984. It’s hard to be offended by the T&A, though, since Cutie Honey a Go Go! resembles a 1962 issue of Playboy more than a volume of Air Gear; there’s a pin-up coyness about Itoh’s cheesecake that renders these images benign. It’s also difficult to be offended by a manga that works so hard to entertain the reader with its anything-for-a-laugh jokes, over-the-top battle sequences, and campy dialogue. I found its unironic goofiness charming — costume failures and all — and think you might, too. Recommended.

Must-Read Reviews

Siddarth Gupta pores over last week’s Weekly Shonen Jump Bonus Issue. Over at Hakutaku, Alana posts a thoughtful introduction to Leiji Matsumoto’s Captain Harlock, tracing the character across the creator’s entire oeuvre. And while you’re there, take a minute to appreciate her review of Hello Baby, a one-shot title from Takeshi Obata (Death Note, Platinum End) and Masanori Morita (Rookies, Shiba Inu) that focuses on “wannabe gangster” who “plots to murder a high-ranking yakuza boss.” Further afield, Kelly Chiu explains why every serious manga fan should read Fullmetal Alchemist.